Monday, October 22, 2012

Halloween fun with Margay Leah Justice

Margay: Well, I am a single mother of two daughters with a passion for
knitting, reading, and writing, of course! I live – and write – in
Massachusetts.

Cate: What do you love most about Halloween?

Margay: I love seeing the kids in their costumes. They usually look so
fantastic and they have so much fun, it’s hard not to get swept up in the
spirit of that.

Cate: Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past?

Margay: Any that involved my daughters is a favorite. When they were
younger, a family in our neighborhood used to really go all out on the
decorations in their front yard – a coffin with a body that rose to a sitting
position, a ‘graveyard’ and even a guillotine once. People used to come from a
few towns over just to see it, so it was fun to walk up there and watch how
others responded to it.

Cate: Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain?

Margay: On several occasions, actually. Probably the most profound is
that my father visited me the night he died. He died in Virginia, I live in
Massachusetts.

Cate: What frightens you the most?

Margay: Speaking in public! I’m kind of a shy person so the thought of
getting up in front of a crowd to speak terrifies me.

Cate: Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your own?

Margay: No, but I would love to do both.

Cate: Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share?

Margay: I wish I had one, but I don’t – my mother’s the crafty one in
that department!

Cate: Tell us about your latest release, and where readers can find it
online.

Margay: My latest release, Sloane Wolf, is about an empath named Shiloh
Beck who is being hunted by a mysterious group that she refers to as ‘the
Institute.’ She is determined not to return there, whatever she has to do to
prevent it. Early on, she crosses paths with the Sloane family and quickly
becomes entangled with them, not realizing that they are a family of
shapeshifters. Of course, she becomes involved with the eldest sibling, Micah
Sloane, and the real fireworks begin!

Shiloh nearly leapt off the sill as
his hand touched her knee. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to
remain seated and appear undaunted by the gesture. “I am…much better now…thank
you,” she said, becoming more unnerved by the presence of his hand by the
minute. Oh, this was not good, not good at all. The longer it remained there, the stronger her impulse
to bolt became. Oh, no…

What was it about this man that rattled her so and with so little
effort on his part? Sharing the same air with him was enough to send her pulses
to the moon—and her mind somewhere else, something new for her. Being this
attracted to a man was beyond her realm of experience. She didn’t know what to
do with it—or about it. Should she do anything? Should she pretend
indifference? And why wasn’t he so deeply affected?
It wasn’t fair.

Still confused, she gave him a weak
smile, intent on backing up her previous claim with the gesture. She feared it
failed miserably. When Micah returned her smile and lifted his hand from her
knee, she felt precisely one second of relief before he shook her world again
by caressing her face in parting. She stumbled

back against the frame of the window,
her lips parting on a startled breath as a lightning bolt shot through her at
his touch. Something flickered in his eyes at her reaction—pain, perhaps—and he
retracted his hand, balling it into a fist as he turned away from her,
preparing to depart.

In an instant, she realized her
mistake. Along with it came the knowledge she couldn’t let him go away angry or
upset. After everything he and his family had done for her, she owed him that
much. She grabbed him by the shirtfront to stop him, and a shock of awareness
shot from her hand directly into his heart, just beneath it. She could see it
in the gaze he leveled on her then, could hear it in his breath trapped within
his lungs, feel it
in the missed beat of his heart. But then, all sense abandoned her, and her heart skipped a beat as he held her hand firmly to his
chest with one of his own and lifted the other to her head, anchoring it
against the window frame. Slowly, his eyes never straying from hers, he leaned
across the space separating them. His lips brushed hers, like a whisper, before
he withdrew, tilted his head to the side, and advanced again. This time the
kiss was fuller, penetrating her every defense, both physical and emotional,
but still not long enough for her. He retreated once again after a fraction of
time and hovered before her, scarcely an inch away. Watching her. Waiting.

Her heart beating a frantic tempo now,
Shiloh abandoned all of her reservations and her good sense to swoop in for a
more vigorous kiss. So vigorous, in fact, she knocked him off his perch through
the open window. Only quick reflexes honed to perfection at the Institute
prevented her from tumbling after him.

Bracing herself against the sill, she
leaned out the window as far as she was able and watched his descent from the
slanted roof to the ground below. She lost sight of him the moment he slid
beyond the reach of the light from her window. But then she heard him land with
a thud —and a howl—on the ground in front of the back porch when he failed to
catch himself on the roof edge. She clasped a hand over her mouth to silence
her reaction and waited. When he didn’t rouse right away, panic shot through
her and she leaned out another few inches.

“Micah? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he answered after a few
moments, appearing beyond the overhang of the roof as if to prove it to her.
“Nothing hurt but what’s left of my pride.”

Relief coursed through her at his
statement, and she allowed herself the laugh she’d literally held back before.
Her mirth was cut short, however, by his next words.

“Hey, Shiloh! We’ve got to stop
falling for each other like this.”

His laughter followed her as she
ducked back into the room. She could still hear it even after she closed the
window, though not as well. Oh, Lord. She
rested against the cool pane of glass and touched her still-tingling lips with
shaky fingers. Was she? Falling for
him? Was that what this crazy-mad feeling inside of her was?

The question plagued her long into the
night.

Cate: What inspired you to write about the theme?

Margay: It started out as just some scenes flitting around in my head,
inspired by a book/movie with a similar theme a few years back. Then I saw a
call online for a contest with a wolf theme and I thought I’d give it a try, so
I really started playing around with these scenes to see if I had enough for a
story. Things really came together and started to gel when I saw an article
online about how the grey wolves were making a return to Massachusetts after an
absence of about a century and a half. Of course, being a writer, I started
thinking about the reasons why they were absent, the consequences of them
making a reappearance and before you knew it, Sloane Wolf was born.

Cate: Anything else you’d like to share?

Margay: If you’d like to learn more about me and what I have planned
for the future, I’d love to have you visit my blog at http://margayleahjustice.blogspot.com.
I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Cate: Margay has a giveaway for you lucky readers!

Margay: In honor of Halloween and my book, I would love to give away
something with a wolf theme that I made myself – it may be fingerless gloves or
a hat with a paw print, or a stuffed wolf (still deciding). Oh, and there might
even be a copy of my book in there, too!

To celebrate all things wolfish, I'm sharing a video showing you how to make werewolf cupcakes! Yum!